Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Thomson - AFX: Big Deal or Little Deal?

Last week's story from AP and other sources on Thomson's acquisition of European equities news agency AFX is downplayed by Thomson in an Information World Review weblog entry this week, which is perhaps appropriate given the scale of the scale of the deal. Rumored to be a USD 20 million takeover, AFX offers a relatively small impact on Thomson Financial's greater bottom line and evolutionary impact on its top line.

But the scope of AFX's position and influence offers Thomson some intriguing opportunities. While AFX content will be used primarily within the Thomson One desktop package to round out European news more to a par with Reuters and Bloomberg in European markets, AFX cuts a very global footprint that covers Asian markets very actively and an online media presence via syndication clients such as Forbes that give AFX a significant amount of Web exposure on international topics of interest to investors. Modest though this may seem it is perhaps the beginning of Thomson having a small toe in the waters of online news distribution that has been sorely lacking.

With CEO Dick Harrington working mightily to keep Thomson a growing company some diversification into strategies with Web components tied to non-enterprise revenue sources is overdue. In the meantime AFX offers Thomson Financial an important step towards a full-replacement product in European markets.

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ABOUT SHORE

My Profile

I focus my professional life at the intersection of content, technology and people, enabling organizations to find their most valuable positioning there. I speak often at conferences, have written the book "Content Nation" on social media (http://goo.gl/bKq6l) and am working on my second book, "The Second Web" (thesecondwebbook.com).

I sail, love to travel and to explore new places, natural wonders and cultures, do community volunteer work, read voraciouly and believe that every day is an opportunity to make the world a better place.

Biography:

John Blossom is a globally recognized media and enterprise content industry analyst, providing thought leadership to executives in search of new approaches to rapidly changing markets for publishing and technology products and services. Mr. Blossom founded Shore Communications Inc. in 1997, specializing in research and advisory services and strategic marketing consulting for publishers and content service providers in enterprise and media markets.

Mr. Blossom’s engagements have included strategic marketing consulting for major corporations and startups as well as speaking engagements at major conferences and advisory services for senior industry executives. Mr. Blossom is the author of the book "Content Nation: Surviving and Thriving as Social Media Changes Our Work, Our Lives and Our Future," published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in January 2009, and speaks frequently at industry and corporate events on publishing in enterprise and media markets.

Mr. Blossom's career spans more than twenty years of marketing, research, product management and development in advanced information and media venues, including the marketing and development of real-time and Web-oriented financial information services at global financial publishers and financial services companies (Citicorp, Quotron and for Reuters Holdings PLC), as well as earlier experience in broadcast media.

Mr. Blossom served as a Vice President and Lead Analyst at Outsell, Inc., where he provided research and analysis coverage of content technologies and financial and corporate information markets for major corporate clients, and developed successful online ecommerce services for research reports.

For his excellence in qualiitative research, Mr. Blossom was recognized with the Vendor of the Year award by Standard & Poor's in 2001. Mr. Blossom's ContentBlogger weblog won the Software and Information Industry Association 2007 CODiE award for Best Media Blog. Mr. Blossom has traveled to and is familiar with both European and Asian markets for content as well as North American markets..

Mr. Blossom has been interviewed frequently by the business press and has been quoted in many major news and trade publications and media outlets, including: